Memories
by k9handler1969
Summary: ATeam story. Very pertinent to today. I wrote this several years before 2001.One of my favorite stories. Constructive criticism welcome.


Memories 

by Jackie Giacomo

In the early morning chill at Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting-place of thousands of brave and loyal military men and women, the marble headstones seemed to stand at attention. All had small, American flags fluttering in the spring air, but fresh flowers had been placed at the bases of two.

Facing two adjacent gravesites stood a lone, uniformed figure. The gentle breeze blew the silver hair under the Green Beret that topped the bowed head. Red roses covered the base of the stone whose inscription read, along with the normal information, "Lieutenant Jennifer Ann Smith -- Nurse, Mother, Angel." The other, with a single, white carnation at its base, only read, "Colonel David Alan Smith -- Medal of Honor, 1941." Both had a date of death of 1952.

Lieutenant Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith stood silent before the graves of his parents. He was pondering the fates that had led him to this point in his life. It was early April. He had just escaped from the maximum-security prison at Fort Bragg. He was alone, save for two other men, he had escaped with and now on the run from the United States Army for a crime he was only guilty of by following the orders of his superior officer. He stood there in the early morning sunlight thinking back to the past, wondering what might have been if he had done things a little differently.

He remembered the first time that he met the Smiths. He was a four-year-old, scared little boy who had just lost his mother in a car accident. He really didn't know much about his father at that point, except that his mother had said that he was a real bad man and that he should never see him again. The Smiths took him in as their foster child and less than two months later, adopted him.

They could not bare to part with the little boy that had become so much a part of them and their lives. He remembered coming into their house on the base and looking up into the caring brown eyes of David Smith that first night and knowing he had come home. Jennifer Smith had him calling her mom on the first night that he was there. They became the whole world to him.

He was so proud of his new dad being an officer in the United States Army that when he was old enough, he applied and was accepted to West Point. He thought back to WWII and how afraid that he was that his dad would not come back from the war. Hannibal and his mother would sit listening to the radio for hours, afraid of what might be happening to him in the South Pacific. Captain David Smith came home from that one, but fates dictated that he was not to come back from the next one.

When Hannibal received his appointment, his dad puffed up like a proud peacock and remained that way for a good solid week, telling everybody that Hannibal was going to the Point. Hannibal remembered fondly wondering if his dad or mother would ever come back down to earth. He had loved them so very much.

When they were both killed in the Korean War, he felt that the ache in his heart would never end. He was there in Korea when his dad was killed and saw how it happened. He had gotten permission from his CO, and had gone to his father's unit to salute him officially for the first time since his graduation from West Point.

But the North Koreans attacked the small outpost while he was there. He saw his dad running around, ordering his men to take up positions against the attack. Hannibal saw a North Korean soldier take aim at his father and he tried to stop it, but lost sight of his father in the smoke of the battle. During the ensuing battle around him, he was wounded when he took over a platoon whose own lieutenant had gone down. He kept on fighting until the attack was repressed and passed out where he stood from the loss of blood and the shock of his wound finally setting in.

He didn't know that his father had been killed in the battle until he had come to in the post op unit of the local MASH. His father's CO had left word with the doctors to tell him when he awoke and that he was being awarded the bronze star for his actions during the battle, not that Hannibal had really cared about that.

The news of his father being killed in the battle hit him like an anvil, so much so that the doctors sedated him for the rest of the day. Just to add insult to injury, a couple of days later from another MASH unit, his mother was killed coming back from leave when the jeep she was riding in from Seoul ran over a land mine. She was on her way to the MASH that he was at, after being informed by the camp Chaplain that he had been badly wounded. She never knew that her husband had been killed. Hannibal often wondered how he got through those first few months after their deaths. But he had to think of survival in the middle of that dammed war and not of the past. He wasn't able to put their deaths behind him until after he returned to the states a year later and visited their graves for the first time.

After he got back from Korea, he remembered looking into who his real father was. It was then that he learned what his real mother had meant by a real bad man, because he was just that. Bad. A cold-blooded killer. He was the head of one of the biggest families in the Chicago mob at the time Hannibal was born. Don Gianni Giacovazzo. A godfather. Since Gianni was Italian for John, he figured that was his real name and his mother changed it. Hannibal knew at that point that he never wanted to meet him. His mother was right in getting him away from that man. If Hannibal had stayed in his care, he would have become just like him and Hannibal shuddered even thinking about that.

It was a past that Hannibal never mentioned to anyone, not even his friends. It was a past that he wanted no part of and kept locked away, hidden from everyone, his friends, the Army and even himself. It was one of the reasons why he hated organized crime so much. Their killings of everyone around one of the opposing families, even innocent children, for no outright reason, other than pure greed, rubbed him the wrong way. To him they had no sense of duty or honor at all. Those were things that he prided the most in his life.

He remembered the good times with his parents. The days when they came out to watch him play baseball in little league, the time spent at the beach on vacation, his mother fixing him up a Halloween costume for him to go trick or treating in and just sitting around on warm summer evenings listening to the radio and enjoying each others company. He fondly thought about when he fell out of tree when he was eight years old and his mother fussing and fawning over him with his arm in a cast. Boy, was she protective of me, he thought, but that was her love showing through to someone who needed it.

Hannibal thought about the first time that his father had called him Hannibal. He was ten years old. He had come home from school that day babbling on and on about what they had just covered in history class. They had recreated one of the major battles of the Civil War and he told his father about what he would have done, had he been in command of the Confederate Army. How the course of the war would have changed if they had maneuvered some of the troops in that battle a little differently.

His father had listened to his son intently and saw the tactical genius in him starting to peek through. From that day forward, his father had started calling him Hannibal after the famous general from Carthage, who defeated the Romans at Cannae in southeastern Italy in 216 B.C. with a much smaller army. The name had stuck and when his father died ten years later during the Korean War, he continued to go by the name in memory of him.

Hannibal looked up from his thoughts. The sun was glinting off the rows of colorful ribbons on the left side of his dress uniform. If anybody had been looking, they would have noticed the light blue ribbon with white stars on it on the top row of his ribbons, indicating the Medal of Honor, and the name tag on his uniform that was the same last name as on the two markers in front of him.

Two Medals of Honor in the same family was an unusual occurrence. But there was no one around to notice. He was still alone. He was glad, in a way that his father had not lived to see that mess that he was in now. But he knew that no matter what anybody said, his father would have believed him and would have supported his son through it all. Hannibal thought that if his father was still alive, he might try to ride this thing out through the channels of the Army, with his dad's support. But, since he wasn't, he didn't have that option to fall back on.

Hannibal thought that he had better be getting on, before anybody recognized him and turned him into the Army. He didn't want to leave this place in that way. He didn't know when he would be able to come back again. He turned back to the headstones in front of him and came to full, rigid military attention. He stood there and gave a textbook perfect military salute to his parents, then turned on his heel and walked away.


End file.
